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In:Bilingualism through the Prism of Psycholinguistics: In honour of Albert Costa
Edited by Mikel Santesteban, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia and Cristina Baus
[Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 17] 2023
► pp. 104–129

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Chapter 3
Can learning explain cognate effects in bilingual comprehension and production?

 | University of Edinburgh
 | University of Edinburgh
 | University of Edinburgh
Published online: 1 September 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.17.03win
Abstract
Most theories of bilingual word recognition and production assume parallel, on-line activation of both languages, even in one-language contexts. A considerable amount of the evidence for parallel activation comes from the study of translation equivalents with similar form and meaning across two languages (cognates), which bilinguals process differently to translation equivalents with no form similarity across languages (non-cognates). The on-line account has been queried by Costa et al. (2017), who suggest that the cognate effect can be explained by learning: on-line cross-talk during second language acquisition would lead to different representations for cognates compared to non-cognates in the bilingual mental lexicon. In this chapter, we focus on these two hypothesised origins of the cognate effect and consider the extent to which cognate effects can be explained by learning and on-line activation.
Article outline
  • How do a bilingual’s languages affect each other?
  • Explanations of the cognate facilitation effect
    • On-line parallel activation
    • Cognate effects in light of learning
  • A theoretical review of cognate effects in bilingual processing
    • Cognate processing in isolation
      • Comprehension
        • Visual word recognition
        • Spoken word recognition
      • Production
    • Cognate processing in sentence contexts
      • Comprehension
      • Production
  • Discussion
  • Note
  • References
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